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jimmyk: On the NLRB ruling, the MSM is depicting it as Barry doing the same thing as all presidents have done for 100 years, to suggest the court overreached. In other words, "Bush did it too!" Is that so, or did he do something different, and the MSM is covering for him?

Last night on the All Stars, Bret schooled Kirsten on that point to the extent that he nearly had to roll up a newspaper and whack her about the head and shoulders. She just could not get into her head the distinction no matter how many times he thumped her.

In particular:
"In an indictment released Tuesday, prosecutors say Swartz stole 4.8 million articles between September 2010 and January after breaking into a computer wiring closet on MIT's campus. Swartz, a student at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, downloaded so many documents during one October day that some of JSTOR's computer servers crashed, according to the indictment."

Jane - the crimes involve a theft of intellectual property AND threatened destruction of proprietary product - the JSTOR subscription service. The former is what everyone gets hung up on - isn't he allowed to access that stuff? And OWS-types add -- Shouldn't that be free? It's the threat to the proprietary service that is worse, in my mind. Here's why: At some point in time, somebody thought there was a market that made it worth time, money, and effort to gather up a slew of scattered bits of documentation - some online, much of it just on paper and on some library shelf somewhere -- and put it all in one, searchable place. They then offered subscriptions to this repository, in part to pay for the development costs, but also for maintenance and continued improvement.

Having done the grunt work to digitize and store tons of items, some guy comes along and takes thousands or millions of items with the purpose of storing it where anyone can get to them -- if successful, then the consequences are no more market, no more subscribers, and, of course, no one else will invest in this sort of product development in future. It's as though you invest in a run-down city block, spend a fortune rehabbing for residences, market to bring in new homeowners, and then have it all seized by eminent domain. Who in their right mind will ever invest in that city's property again?

And yes, the prosecutors are ALSO guilty of overreach and aggression and general nastiness. No one comes out looking good in this story.

MT, can you elaborate? Is it just that with Bush the Senate was in fact in recess, whereas with Barry they technically weren't, because someone would come in every day and bang on a gavel and then leave?

Exactly. In the Bush days, Harry Reid passed a senate rule that allowed the senators to come in and bang a gavel precisely so Bush could not issue a recess appointment. And the senate gets to make its own rules. The executive can't simply change or ignore them because they feel like it. Bush never violated that rule - appointed someone when they were coming in and banging the gavel. Obama did thus taking away their ability to advise and consent.

The issue is it was not a recess appointment. The senate was still in session according to the senate rules and the senate gets to make its own rules. The president does not get to ignore them. That violates the constitution.

BTW - WIKILeaks is the wrong analogy above I realize, because nothing was secret.

Nobody has more scorn for Noonan than I, but she gets it partly right on the Benghazi hearings when she describes the disgracefully disorganized performance of the Repubs, except for Ron Johnson who significantly earned a sharp retort from Rodham illustrating that his projectile had reached the target. This quote gets it exactly right: Minority parties can't act like this, in such a slobby, un-unified way. And this: McCain made a scattered speech - really it was just like him - that couldn't find the energy to end in serious questions.

I was really disappointed in McConnell because I've doggedly defended him previously; but not here. I expect no leadership from Boehner based on 2 years experience and if I get any, I'll just consider it good luck.

I think McConnell did ok with the filibuster. By telling everyone that Bammy's plan is to dismantle the Republican Party, that makes most republicans mad. Even the ones who didn't vote in the 2012 election. Bummer's run on guns is also pissing everyone off in the repub party. Immigration will be a resolved issue so now all we have abject failure in the foreign policy and letting sequeter rip. Bammy has been smacked down by the courts and that in Slo-Joe's terms regardless of what Carney says Is A BFD.
I like Redford as an actor. Hooker in Butch Cassidy and Hubble in "The Way WE Were " are classic examples. Mia Farrow was miscast in Gatsby. I am very excited to see Leo DiCaprio as the new Jay Gatsby in the remake.
"Ordinary People" is a great movie and yes, he is better as a director. Paul Newman was actually handsomer than Redford in BCand SK.

So, do we all think it is a good idea to join forces with the hackers/anonyomous' guild to build a kevlar party of liberterian ideal? Defense is great but what do you project as offense - internet freedom? That is a sure winner at the polls.

Jimmy I thing everyone above got it right explaining the difference between Obama's appointments and all the presidents before.

As DoT said first yesterday and Fox (ChK) repeated, the Senate is only in recess when it says it is recess and only the Senate can make that rule. It was Harry Reid that got the definition to cover Jim Webb driving in during Bush's time to turn the lights on and gavel them into session. According to Fox, while Bush did make 100+ recess appointments, he stopped making them when the Reid-Webb definition applied.

Along comes Obama who on his own declared the Senate rule wrong then made his appointments because by HIS definition they were not in session. And the Dems sat on their hands and the Reps were toothless as usual.

The slippery slope, had the court ruled differently, would be that a President could the define any time they are out of the room as "not in session"...lunch time eg, or middle of the night, or...you get the point.

just wrong? Because he asserts that Bolton's appointment was unconstitutional, because the Senate was only in "adjournment," not in recess. That's the source of my confusion. I guess as a matter of law he's wrong simply because a court never ruled on it, but I mean "wrong" more fundamentally.

Schwartz was wrong. OTOH Jstor made those files public on its own --I think about the time he committed suicide. The complaint is that the prosecution was seeking a far too lengthy sentence for the offense.

I'm reaching the point--esp after Libby, Zimmerman, this case and my time on the grand jury--that I think prosecutors need strict supervision.

Jstor made those files public on its own --I think about the time he committed suicide.

I think JSTOR has made some files (not those in particular) available for free on a limited basis, as it has been moving in that direction for a while (unrelated AFAIK to the Swartz case). You still have to sign up for an account, and access is limited to a certain number of articles per week.

Swartz worked with Issa to stop SOPA in Congress. JSTOR did not press charges. After DOJ got involved the kid was facing 35 years.
My previous post on the subject got eaten. I am becoming really paranoid now.....

Schwartz bad permission to download from JSTOR but not from MIT where the download took place. Original indictment carried 6 month sentence. Feds on the other hand slapped him with 13 federal counts, with possible 35 years.

A recess appointment is a procedure that allows a president to fill a vacant job when Congress is not in session. Lawmakers left for vacation last week. The move will allow Bolton to stay in the job without Senate confirmation until the end of the current Congress in January 2007.

Perhaps the Reid rule was a reaction to it. Once again he shot himself in the foot.

Having read the NLRB opinion in full now, I think there is a constitutional limit to what the Senate can do with its rules. The court parsed the meaning of "the recess" in the constitution and concluded that the definite article makes the term applicable only to intersession vacancies and appointments. Any future intrasession appointment would be invalid whether there is gavel-banging or not.

DoT, it's a great pyramid but the brats should be brown like Usingers or Neuskes. (I'll probably be excommunicated or something for saying so but my preference is the less salty kinds you sometimes find at local WI sausage makers or even the German white ones with cardamon in them.)

CH, he's about my only hope of not having a Senator Ed Markey (D-his mother's house) or Gov. Marsha Coakley.

What a miserable position to be in. Look at it this way: with those clowns they'll stick a shiv right into your heart and put you out of your misery. With Scottie, he'll give you enough festering minor wounds (Dodd-Frank and every instance of donk procedural chicanery) that you'll wish you were dead.

Actually, judges should get off their asses and do something about the multiple count abuse. It seems to me it's a due process question--I recall in the Conrad Black case it was particularly egregious. (Another prosecution abuse I forgot to list.)

"The US federal government has strayed so far from the Constitution and the rule of law that it can now be considered rogue and illegitimate.

Written by Lawrence Sellin @ the New York Daily Sun -

The thoroughly irresponsible rate of government spending projected over the next twenty-five years will drive federal debt to unsustainable levels. The country is heading for a financial meltdown and economic ruin.

The Republican Party is inept and impotent and cannot provide the necessary political opposition to the crimes and unconstitutional policies of the Obama regime or stand against the rampant voter fraud which is now polluting the electoral process. There is a report claiming that the Republican Party signed a legal agreement with the Democrat Party in 1982 not to pursue suspected vote fraud. If there is no guarantee of election integrity, then elections become only window dressing for tyranny.

Barack Obama is an illegal President and unindicted felon. Congress, the American media and the courts are engaged in a criminal conspiracy to conceal their complicity in perpetrating the Obama fraud on the American people. Law enforcement and our elected officials have chosen to risk the survival of the country rather than risk the truth..."

The author: Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Afghanistan and the Culture of Military Leadership“

I'm there, but are there other things we could try before taking to the streets with AR-15s? Refusing to pay income taxes won't work due to the genius of withholding, but other countries have "general strikes," for example.

Of course they'd resurrect the platinum coin idea if things got really bad, but I'd be interested in a list of direct action possibilities that deprive the government of money. Anyone know of such a thing?

I've been reading and listening to some very old stuff in my now organized music collection, I am pleasantly surprised at the simple beauty in the folk stuff we listened to back in the early '60s. Richard and Mimi, Pete Seeger, etc. If you block all the commie connections that seemed to grow on them like barnacles, it is really lovely, singable stuff.

Unfortunately, now it reminds us of yet another fundraiser on PBS. But think about it, in it's most innocent ways, it was as pure an environment as you could have to collect kids, grandkids and all have a great time.

What's interesting to me is that through the subsequent decades we've had a somewhat natural evolution of the genre. Kate and Anna in the '70s, Emmylou and Prine in the '80s. There was also a lot of pop/rock stuff that fit this same sweet, fun mold even if it became ever more saccharin. John Denver.

So is there some source frame of reference that determines who writes/sings in these particular realms? Woody Guthrie and Seeger certainly came down through the poor starving farmer path that naturally looked like the perfect commie overlay before communism took on its full totalitarian mantle. Meanwhile Western (Cowboy?) music was celebrating the rugged individual even in his crying over a beer about his lost dog/girl/pickup.

Now, perhaps because of the focus of the music industry being around Nashville, C&W has mostly a conservative bias even though there are plenty of lib players in the field. Maybe this is the opposite of Hollyweird.

OK, porch and CH and all you other music experts, how about some whittlin' talk.

Ex,
stopping all commerce other than bare necessities would be a start. Buy second hand. Use black market whenever possible. If you renovate, try doing it without permit (if you have decent neighbors). Pay cash (usually you will get "discount").

"Refusing to pay income taxes won't work due to the genius of withholding"

You can reduce the amount withheld by increasing the number of dependents you claim on the form you fill out with your employer. This is legal, provided that you declare the actual number on your tax return, and submit a large check to cover the under-withheld amount. So you could simply decline to send in the check--although I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm not subject to withholding, but am required to submit quarterly estimates along with the appropriate amount of money, or face fines and penalties. Either way, the IRS knows what I have received on the basis of the 1099's and K-1's the financial institutions provide them. If I didn't pay they would immediately place liens on the various assets.

In short, not a good idea unless you can be sure that scores of millions of others were going to do the same thing.

On average, as of April 2012, state and local taxes add 31.1 cents to gasoline and 30.2 cents to diesel for a total US average fuel tax of 49.5 cents per gallon for gas (13.07 ¢/L) and 54.6 cents per gallon for diesel (14.42 ¢/L).[11]

The state and local tax figure includes fixed per gallon taxes as well as taxes that are a percentage of the sales price.

The states that have a tax on their fuel, impose a tax on commercial drivers that travel through their state, even if the fuel is not purchased in that state. The paper work for this taxed on a quarterly basis and filed somewhat like a federal tax return that is done yearly. Most commercial truck drivers have an agent fill out the paper work. The driver calls in their information, the agent figures out how much tax should be paid to each state, then the agent faxes the forms to the driver and they are required to carry the papers with them along with their travel log books.[12]

"Libya's upheaval the past two years helped lead to the ongoing conflict in Mali, and now Mali's war threatens to wash back and further hike Libya's instability. Fears are growing that post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya is becoming an incubator of turmoil, with an overflow of weapons and Islamic jihadi militants operating freely, ready for battlefields at home or abroad."

One of the basic tenets of national policy is to make one's tactics and operations serve the larger strategy. It's difficult to discern the strategy with this crew, but unless it's to foster a resurgence of radical Islam, our operations don't seem to be supporting it.

MT, I am now reading Keith Richards's "Life," and I recommend it most highly.

At exactly the same time he and Mick were combing the barren English landscape for American blues (actually a couple of years before that) a half-dozen or so of my buddies and I were listening to a 50,000-watt station out of Tijuana (XEAC, still on the air) that featured a couple of black DJ's out of L.A. who played Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, James Brown and the Famous Flames, Little Walter, Son House and all those great bluesmen every night. All our friends were listening to Pat Boone.

In college I discovered (and got copies of) the Library of Congress recordings of Leadbelly made by Alan Lomax, and got into the Weavers (with Seeger and later Erik Darling), and then came Joan Baez. You may be surprised at how eclectic Keith's tastes were.

I'd come to St. Louis from Wisconsin for college. After college, got a job there. One Memorial/Independence/Labor day, I was put in charge of getting bratwurst for a cookout, and I said "I've never seen brats in the stores here." Surprise was expressed, however someone else said they'd get those - put me on potato salad duty or something.

Come the day of the cookout, the coals are ready, and they put these white sausages on the grill. "What are those?" I ask innocently. "Those are bratwurst". "No. Way." I said.

I checked the package, and sure enough, that's what they were called on the label.

I had no idea.

Stay tuned and maybe I'll tell the story about how I thought "Busch" was some local politician who plastered campaign stickers all over the beer kegs.

Jane, it's about the Administration's war on women--its inconsistent demands for special sensitivity towards women at the very same time opening up combat slots for them and putting forth a deceitful Hillary to cover for it.
The shameful role of women in all this, redeemed only by Sheryl Attkisson's brave efforts to find and report the truth on the Benghazi disaster..

I'd like to know if Feinstein's iteration of prog Black Gun phobia has some foundation regarding a growing militia movement or is just run of the mill progfodder.

I don't believe we've hit a Zenger Moment as yet because I haven't seen sufficient contempt for magistrates but I have no idea regarding the state of play in the militia movements - aside from the fact the ones I've read of recently appear to have better screening and organizational controls.

When are they going to learn? It's the same with everyone. You simply cannot make people "equal" by making them "special". It is such a disservice. And buying into it is the difference between success and failure.

Jane, I wish I knew. Someone just sent me an article he'd written respecting Coulter's argument that now that there are more women in the military the Dems will be less successful in scary stories about guns. I don't know if that' true or not. I spend a lot of time cruising the net, and in that hobby I see little evidence that emotional appeals to both sexes are less effective . reason seems to be on a long vacation.

It's remarkable how little the gun-banning zealots actually know about firearms. How many people who have a working familiarity with, say, the M-16 and the AR-15, rail against the legality of the latter? I can't think of any, offhand. And they betray themselves every time they evidence an ignorance of the differnce between a clip and a magazine.

What is a "military-style" weapon? Is it one that looks menacing? What does "style" have to do with it?

Does Piers Morgan actually believe that a shooter can fire 100 rounds from an AR-15 in a minute? Does he believe that a madman intent on the mass murder of children would be unable to carry out the slaughter if we passed a law against this, that or the other weapon?

At this point it is the NRA arrayed against the determinedly ignorant. That's no guarantee of victory (as we have seen), but it sure helps.

DoT, as I mentioned on some earlier thread moons ago, the Red, White and Blues DVD that was part of Scorsese's series chronicled how all the Brit kids scrounged records of the blues pioneers and how that was really the foundation of the Brit Rock. It remains one of my all time favs for both the storytelling and the great jamming.

I missed that earlier post, MT, and have been unaware of the Scorcese DVD. That whole period in musical history has always fascinated me: these undernourished, skinny post-WWII English boys falling in love with Mississippi delta and Chicago blues, and trying to get their arms around it any way they could.

Thoroughly enjoyable gloat from the WSJ:

"In Noel Canning v. NLRB, a Washington state Pepsi bottler challenged a board decision on grounds that the recess appointments were invalid and that the NLRB thus lacked the three-member quorum required to conduct business. The D.C. Circuit agreed, while whistling a 98 mile-per-hour, chin-high fastball past the White House about the separation of powers."

Nothing like the high hard one to flip an asshole who's been pushing his luck.

Danube, the LIBTARDS are equally ignorant of Economics, and the founding Fathers idea's concerning FREEDOM. It's no by accident. They don't give a fiddlers fart HOW and WHAT this nation was founded on. It's really that simple. Like an athlete claiming the OTHER GUY touched the ball last, LIBTARDS want to WIN. The rules are for suckers.